March marks the unofficial beginning of Canadian personal tax season. Six years ago(!!), I put together a list of things you should prepare to have your personal tax return completed. The list is largely still correct today, with the addition of needing to provide documentation related to any real estate purchase or sale you’ve made during the year. If you’re looking for a relatively exhaustive list of the documentation you may need to prepare, see this link here.

I’m going to continue some financial writing momentum from last week. I had a few emails flow in from readers who sent some creative encouragement my way. To them, I say, “Thank you greatly!”. I’ll respond better in the coming week, but it does not go unappreciated to have readers reach out with words of encouragement. Hopefully, this week is just a little smoother as a result.

I mentioned Toonie, a newsletter I wrote for a few months a few years back, and it’s become a nice spot to rob and repurpose some financial topics. I may repurpose some of those topics over the coming weeks — the severity of tax season scheduling puts me on my heels sometimes, so I apologize if you’ve heard these stories before.

This week’s topic: My thoughts on the phrase “good debt” and “bad debt”.

Good Debt and Bad Debt

I constantly hear the phrase, “Well, at least a mortgage is good debt.” As in, buying real estate is an indicator of good debt, while purchasing anything else with debt is bad debt. I don’t agree entirely with this sentiment, especially since it’s such a common perception to have.

In theory, the only good debt is tax-deductible debt. Which means the debt needs to be tied to the purchase of an investment that earns you income in some shape or form. The interest you pay on the liability becomes deductible for tax if it currently or will likely result in interest, rent, royalties, business, or other forms of income to be paid to you now or in the future.

In a broader sense, though, good debt (in my opinion) is any debt that purchases an asset that yields a greater rate of return than the cost of that asset (including debt/interest costs). It doesn’t have to be just tax-deductible debt.

So, if you take your home equity line of credit (HELOC) (which carries a low interest rate like, say, 4.99%) and improve your home (which carries an average annual rate of return of 7.31%), then the home equity line of credit is good debt. The interest paid on the HELOC isn’t deductible for tax purposes if you improve your principal residence, but it still results in a greater long-term asset improvement than if the investment wasn’t incurred.

If you purchase a vehicle on debt, and that vehicle has a rate of return greater than the amounts paid out to operate the vehicle (including interest paid on the loan), then I think that debt is still “good”. It doesn’t matter how fast a vehicle depreciates. This could be the case if you use the vehicle to earn income, for instance.

There’s also the residual value of any asset you purchase with that debt, or the value of the asset once you’re done using it. In effect, if you borrow $5,000 to purchase an asset, and you can sell it for $2,000 once you’re finished with it, you only have to earn $3,000 (plus interest costs, which are very low these days) to ensure the debt is “good debt”.

Basically, if debt enables you to buy something that improves your net worth eventually, it probably meets my personal definition of “good debt”.

Let’s not kid ourselves: I do believe consumer debt is bad debt. "Consumer debt", something we'll touch on more in the future, could be considered "expenses", or the costs of running your everyday life. Paying interest on groceries or for the latest shopping spree is seldom wise (the only situation that comes to mind is if you happen to own a clothing store). "Expenses" should be paid for in cash or on a credit card and paid off in entirety each month.

There are also common scenarios which I’ve come to feel are bad debt when most people consider it good debt. A personal residence with lots of equity and a tiny mortgage is bad debt — the owner has lots of personal net worth thanks to the low mortgage, but there is a giant asset sitting there, idle, unable to build anything. You shouldn’t always have a mortgage, don’t get me wrong. But paying down your mortgage extra-fast and not reinvesting the unlocked equity generally results in less personal net worth growth in the long run.

Lastly, I believe there is “good debt”, “better debt”, and “even better debt”. Call it Debt Pro, Debt Max, and Debt Ultra (we’re on the eve of a major Apple product launch week, after all). And I'd attribute those characteristics solely based on the rate of return of the asset you purchase. Essentially, the more you earn with the asset you purchase with the debt, the better the debt. An example of each:

• Debt Pro — Purchasing a tool that enables you to casually earn income in the evenings over a few years.
• Debt Max — Purchasing a rental property using equity you own in your personal home.
• Debt Ultra — Hiring an employee, effectively billing out their time, and using the unlocked time you gain to reach new business success levels.

(These are examples I am coming up with on the spot. They won’t be perfect analogies. I’m attempting to move up the compounding and impact scale for each “type” of debt.)

Remember: Debt is a tool. It costs something, yes, but it provides access to assets faster than if you were to save to pay for them with cash.

If you can earn more than all the costs associated with the asset purchased with debt, then I think it’s good debt.

Debt makes the world go round.

The Second Cup

Scrybble

Scrybble is a monthly subscription to sync your reMarkable notes to Obsidian. It can find and extract highlights (remembering, of course, that highlights on a reMarkable are not actual annotations, which causes all sorts of hardship if you want to sync your highlights somewhere). You can also convert your reMarkable typed notes to Markdown. I still have to figure out how to move the Markdown highlights from ePubs I’ve read on the reMarkable into Readwise, but this at least seems promising.

Vernal Core3 L-Shaped Standing Desk

I discovered Vernal through a Workspaces.xyz interview in the last few weeks. This appears to be a totally price-accessible L-shaped standing desk option (which, I think, is basically a unicorn in the desk world). I’d be curious whether the Core3 is ultra-wobbly or relatively stable.

What is Trust?

Though Aly has directed his writing towards physicians, I’m finding it interesting how many nuggets can be transferred to other professions. I appreciate this close look at trust, and the subsequent brainstorming session on applying it to accountancy.

GMK MTNU Dasher Keycaps

I’m not into any Apple TV+ shows, but my understanding is this particular set of keycaps takes inspiration from an Apple TV+ show. These look excellent. Though, I’m unsure what kind of office decor would benefit from boldly blue keycaps.

Retro Future: The Mid-Century Modern Office Setup

Here’s another discovery I made thanks to Workspaces.xyz. There’s a lot to discover and enjoy on Spencer Scott Pugh’s blog.

Quote of the Week

“Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

A simple quote, but when thought of in depth, is impactful in so many ways. When was the last time you thought about what it takes to produce a hot shower?

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

A quick comment or two on Hockey Canada’s loss in the gold medal final this morning: In many ways, this was the best way to lose a game. There is no sensible person on the planet who watched the game and came away thinking the USA “crushed” Canada, or was even the better team. Every single person on social media across all platforms have agreed that Canada was “goalied” this morning — stymied by the best goaltender on the planet. Canada played a fantastic hockey game, were clearly the superior team, and did it all without their trusted leader. Funny things happen in winner-take-all games.

And let’s not skip over the class shown by the American team after their victory. They acknowledged being outplayed. They have toned down all sorts of trash talk and rhetoric. They even brought this grown man to tears with the Gaudreau tribute. Truly, this was a classy team when it counted and a worthwhile victor.

Congratulations to the Americans. You won’t have any experience defending a title — it’s far harder than winning it the first time around. Good luck in the next Games!

I’m going to try talking about work this week instead. I promised a few weeks back I’d try to produce something you could learn, something of value you could take with you during the week. Way back, I wrote a very short-lived newsletter called “Toonie” that attempted to provide this sort of value. Maybe I should revive it. It was far, far more widely read than this Sunday Edition has ever been.

Where it fell short for me was in the weekly effort it took to put together that level of value for a reader. Financial writing is difficult — there are so many “it depends” and so many variables to work through, it takes considerable effort to be concise and accurate at the same time.

You Need Less Money in Retirement Than You Think

This point-of-view will probably run against prevailing advice. Delayed gratification is a good thing, they say. If you want to have fun, you’ll need to save at least, say, $1 million by the time you are 65 years of age. Because, of course, loaves of bread will be $20 when you ultimately decide to retire.

(For those who think $1 million is a lot, it’s really not. Approximately 40% of workers in Canada are funded through taxpayer dollars, and the majority of those have pension plans which hold large retirement assets. You may not be staring at $1 million in your online banking portal, but you certainly have access to healthy retirement income.)

But there’s more to the retirement income story which helps take some burden off today. You probably don’t need $1 million (or more) to retire. There are other sources of income to get you through.

The Canada Pension Plan is a very real savings asset. You can’t add it to your net worth statement, but a generally healthy retirement will yield $12,500-$20,000 a year (depending on when you started contributing and how much you contributed in your working life). When you turn 65 years of age, you also gain access to Old Age Security, or about $10,000 of additional income in the year. In total, most Canadians who worked and contributed CPP in their career, will receive upwards of $25,000-$30,000 per year. For a retired couple, you could potentially double it.

Then you can consider tax. The current basic personal amount (the amount of money you receive “tax-free”, for lack of a better term) is $16,000 federally. When you turn 65 years of age, you gain an additional $8,400 of “tax-free” income through the age amount. As a result, for many, many Canadians who receive CPP and OAS, a great deal of the income is tax-free.

So, backwards engineer the math — if a retired couple has about $50,000 (for round numbers) of tax-free income, they have $4,150 of tax-free money to spend on a monthly basis. Many don’t have a mortgage or rent. Many have lesser wants and desires. Many have a save-first attitude.

And this is the base for many Canadians. If you have any net worth of any kind, it adds to this amount. Tax becomes a consideration for all amounts above the basic and age amounts, but it’s not an unbearable amount of tax in the base brackets.

$4,150 per month is not a crazy amount of money per month, no. But it’s a strong start, and it eliminates some stress in your earning years to save for retirement.

Here’s my last comment on amounts of money you need in retirement: Remember the basic math that $1,000,000 of savings, with no rate of return at all, is withdrawn to nil at $40,000 per year for 25 years. This $40,000 adds to the $30,000 of CPP and OAS I discussed earlier. And in reality, an inflationary rate of 2% and a savings rate of 4% in a $1,000,000 savings account would require $50,000 per year in withdrawals to get it down to nil in 25 years. Now you’re at $80,000 a year in cash income (less some tax), which is more than the average Canadian salary right now.

All of this is to say: You need to save less for retirement than you think. Don’t use my words to go on a spending spree now — compounding is a very real thing when you mention retirement savings — but use it as a chance to reduce your stress and anxiety about the future.

The Second Cup

The Ultimate Color E-Ink Tablet Buying Guide

Chalid Raqami has the best e-reader and e-ink reviews on YouTube, bar none. This is an excellent comparison between the reMarkable Paper Pro, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, and Boox Note Air 5C. I thought the reMarkable would be blown out of the water, but appears to hold its own in certain categories.

Satchel & Page Executive Briefcase

I think I’ve found my desert island briefcase. I have likely written about it before, but there is something about the black leather option that has caught my eye.

Satchel & Page Carry On Pro Review

I’m clearly on a Satchel & Page kick. This review of the upcoming Carry On Proluggage option from Satchel & Page is splendid. I’ve saved more than a few videos from Desmond Wong to watch over the coming week.

Wes Huff on receiving the Gospel, rather than achieving the Gospel

Wes Huff continues to share the Good News in a wholly unique way.

Marcin Patrzałek Proves One-Guitar Masterpieces Are Real

This can’t be real. Seriously? I don’t think this video “proves” anything at all. But assuming it is real, this is some of the coolest music I’ve ever seen.

Current Reader

Here’s a unique new RSS app making the rounds this week. Side-note: I feel like serif fonts are making a comeback in apps these days (check out Acme Weather, a new weather app making the rounds as well). I’m here for it.

Highlight of the Week

“The best-educated and highest-earning Americans, who can have whatever they want, have chosen the office for the same reason that devout Christians attend church on Sundays: It’s where they feel most themselves. “For many of today’s rich there is no such thing as ‘leisure’; in the classic sense—work is their play,” the economist Robert Frank wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.””

— Derek Thompson

This resonates. Seriously, seriously resonates.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

That’s work energy, to be clear. For whatever reason, creative energy seems to be at an all-time low. I’m not sure why. Sitting down to write this Sunday Edition has been perhaps the most difficult sit down since I started in January 2025.

Some Brief Impressions of the Logitech MX Master 4 Mouse

I might throw together a true review of Logitech’s new MX Master 4 in the future, as this mouse is far, far more than I originally imagined. I expected the MX Master 4 to be an evolutionary step forward for the MX Master line. Each iteration prior has been evolutionary — I started with the MX Master 2S, then 3 and 3S, and now 4, and 4 is most certainly the biggest jump forward. Now, after a few days of use, I actually think it’s a worthy upgrade, even potentially for those coming from the MX Master 3S.

My three bullet points:

Haptics and the Action Ring — Initially, this Action Ring felt like such a gimmick. In the past, I used the thumb pad button to click, hold, and move between desktops or to use Exposé on the Mac. Now, the thumb pad defaults to Logi’s Action Ring. The Action Ring pulls up a circular array of icons, enabling you to use your mouse for quick shortcuts (almost like keyboard shortcuts or macros, but for your mouse). I am only just starting to customize this Action Ring. A few of my choices:

• A button to open our a “Clients” folder in Finder.
• A button to initiate Alfred.
• A button to launch Gemini right in the browser.

As you scroll through the options in the Action Ring, the MX Master 4’s built-in haptic feedback provides a new level of interaction with your mouse pointer. There’s so much here to love and feel.

Materials — The MX Master 4’s most notable physical change is the removal of the rubbery (and ultimately oily) material and the inclusion of what seems to be a hard plastic. I can tell almost instantly that this won’t pick up as many oily hand marks in the long run. I’m not sure at this time whether it feels better, but I’d suggest feeling better wasn’t a priority on this material selection. This material still feels great and is likely to ensure the MX Master 4 looks prim and proper on your desk far longer than any of its predecessors.

I’m also noticing a somewhat translucent plastic used at the ends of the actual finger mouse click buttons. It’s a subtle inclusion, but looks quite elegant.

Thumb scroll wheel — I use the thumb scroll wheel a fair bit, specifically inside wide Excel worksheets. I immediately noticed the larger (read as “more surface area”) of the MX Master 4’s thumb scroll wheel, which helps provide that much more control when scrolling left and right. In general, I’ve always felt horizontal scrolling to be a bit finicky in the past. The MX Master 4 seems to have smoothed this out a bit. Even moving left and right in Finder is a bit smoother. Though this could be software improvements, I think it’s at least in part due to a much larger thumb scroll wheel.

Overall, the MX Master 4 has completely surprised me. I was expecting far less — I was expecting more of a makeover and less of a major jump forward. Now, I’m left wondering if I should update my MX Master 3S sitting on my home office desk as well.

One Writing Tool Per Task

This article from Cogmodo caught my attention, if only because it’s something I’ve found to be quite successful for my own work in the past. I have struggled to use only one app for text-based tasks for a long, long time. I have tried to use, say, just Craft for writing here on this site, for keeping track of notes, and even for certain parts of my GTD productivity workflow. But it doesn’t take long for the context to be wrong and the one-size-fits-all app breaks down. I think the average person probably raises an eyebrow when they read about using five different apps for writing.

But there’s something to it, especially in terms of environmental design. I’m reading through James Clear’s Atomic Habits for the first time (I have a vast array of books I need to catch up on from the last 15 years) and I truly value his discussion on environmental cues. If you want to build a habit, you need to develop cues, and those cues can be items, actions, or other trigger mechanisms. So many cues are tied up in an environment — you likely associate sitting on the couch with entertainment, so it’s likely not the place to attempt to get hyper-focused productive work completed.

The same goes for software. If you associate an app with a particular thing over time, it’s very difficult to break that association within your workflow. For my writing workflow, I could not break away from Ulysses’s visual formatting — I appreciate how links are hidden behind the text and how formatting is noticeable inline (and any code fades into the background). I also couldn’t break away from Ulysses’s text check features — I attempted to use AI tools for editing, but it broke my focus just enough to make editing a headache outside Ulysses.

Overall, if you find the way one particular app handles a small portion of your workflow, rest assured you aren’t the only individual out there choosing to use more than three apps for one specific workflow. Cogmodo is using five different apps for writing, so you’re good to go if you want to use two or three.

The Second Cup

Coburn’s Icon Packs for iPhone and iPad

If you’re curious about how to use any of these icons to customize your iPhone, see this YouTube short video.

Mark Jardine’s reMarkable Paper Pro Move Art

This is one way to use your reMarkable Paper Pro Move. Another is how I use it: illegible, gross chicken scratch that diminishes the e-paper tablet’s beauty. Jardine’s use case is far superior to mine.

Rivian R2 wishes as an R1 owner

Christian Selig (creator of the formerly popular Apollo Reddit app) discusses things he hopes to see improved in the upcoming Rivian R2. I saw a few of these beautiful vehicles in Seattle this past summer. One glance at the sticker price and my eyeballs popped out of my head. A beautiful machine, with a beautiful price.

“He’s Captain Canada. He’s Mr. Canada.”

I have been a Sidney Crosby fan since he pulled off a now-coined “Michigan” move when he was 16 years old in the then-QMJHL. He was named the league MVP in the QMJHL that year as a 16-year-old. It’s been over 20 years now of following and watching as many Crosby games as possible. To see Sid’s legacy continue to grow now, long after he was supposed to have slowed down, is surreal.

Somehow, I’m a bigger fan now than I ever was as a kid.

Quote of the Week

“Mental liquidity. It’s the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when you come across new information. It shouldn’t be controversial. But mental liquidity is so rare. Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake.”

— Morgan Housel

I might need to cool it on Morgan Housel quotes. It’s been a few already, I know. His writing is just so darn quotable.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

This is our first ever hot vacation. And I’ll be darned, it took us far too long. There’s a reason so many folks flock to sunnier shores at this time of year.

Also, for the first time ever, I’m actually using the MacBook Pro’s nano texture display in the manner for which it was intended.

Also, also, I have discovered mojitos.

The Misfit Tree

My dad once told me as a kid that little things that make a person imperfect — a mole, a scar, a funny laugh — are what make them beautiful. That as I got older (he told this to me when I was a young child as a way to build my confidence over the small mole I have above my lip), I would recognize these little imperfections were truly beauty markers.

He was right, of course.

Everyone has a misfit tree in some way. Those characteristics are what make them unique and beautiful.

I Deleted My Second Brain

Joan Westberg’s commentary regarding her second brain — both the creation of her PKM system and how it altered her actual work and thinking — really hits home for me. Westberg’s main points:

But Borges understood the cost of total systems. In “The Library of Babel,” he imagined an infinite library containing every possible book. Among its volumes are both perfect truth and perfect gibberish. The inhabitants of the library, cursed to wander it forever, descend into despair, madness, and nihilism. The map swallows the territory.
PKM systems promise coherence, but they deliver abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it  -  and move on. But the insight was never lived  -  it was just stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.
Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder.
I stopped wondering and started processing.

I wrote for some publications back in the day, and my colleagues were huge into personal knowledge management. They still are! And though I believe these types of systems have the potential to unlock a connection here or there, I simply don’t believe these systems consistently produce enough value to justify their creation. Definitely not for me. If you swear by your PKM system, that’s wonderful — I’d challenge you to show me how it provides daily value to you and your work. That’s not a shot or a “Prove me wrong” question. It’s literally me asking for the sake of perhaps unlocking something new for myself.

But I’ve tried. I’ve tried again and again. AnyType, Obsidian, Roam Research, Apple Notes — I’ve tried them all in the hopes of somehow unlocking some newfound second brain power that shows its value over and over.

I have likely settled on a form of PKM — I save anything educational for work in Notion, which can be referenced via Notion AI by me or the entire office. For everything else, I save things to MyMind, which I use for writing inspiration or general personal research (say, for a renovation in the house). I suppose I also save highlights to Readwise and review those each morning, though this is more for spaced repetition than it is for making mind-bending connections between privately written notes.

I’ll probably strike a nerve by saying PKM systems are more likely than not more cumbersome than most people will find truly useful. Doing something for the sake of doing something — making yourself feel productive — is the least productive action possible.

“What history generally “teaches” is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.”

— Adam Gopnik

The Second Cup

The Best Cover of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck

I learned some words to this song thanks to this cover.

The Most Romantic Hotels in the World

It’s Valentine’s season, so why not ring it in with a booking at one of these outstanding hotels. I have this one saved in MyMind for some future parent-only travel.

Tuna for Mac

Interesting take on an improved Spotlight search.

A Great Mojito Recipe

Because this is what I’m going to make when I get home. In the summer, of course.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

I continue to read through The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and continue to highlight profusely. This week’s readings covered off decision-making and reading, and how important reading is to fight the issues caused by social media. Naval seems to focus heavily on reading for his learning, and he uses social media to hone his writing. I appreciate this use case, even if it perpetuates modern social media thinking.

Books, for Naval, have to teach him something, and they have to teach him something fast. If a book doesn’t capture attention by the end of the first chapter, onto the shelf it goes. This is the second time this type of reading habit has been discussed in the last few weeks. Which is likely to say that it’s a great way to read and learn ideas.

More importantly, it leads me to wonder if readers can learn anything on this blog in a short period of time. Presently, at best the site is a reflection of the things I find interesting or the things I come across during the day. I don’t delve too far into my area of work expertise, simply because there is so much other information online someone could consume to get their fill of financial expertise.

But maybe this is something I should try more often? Perhaps I should lean more into the things I actually know something about, rather than — like I noted above — perpetuate the world of people talking about topics they know nothing about? I don’t know if I could pull off 52 new topics per year in this sort of format. And that’s a ton of money talk for me to get wrong.

Either way, I appreciate the thought experiment. This book continues to be a goldmine of great ideas.

Crouton

I think I had come across Crouton a while back and largely glanced past it. I don't understand why — this is one of the prettiest apps on my iPhone right now. From the app icon through every view in the app, Crouton is a lesson in modern iPhone app design.

More importantly than design, though, are the myriad of ways to add a recipe to the app. You can share a URL from a website and Crouton will auto-populate each field, grab a hero image, and even break part the preparation steps. If you add a recipe from a photo (say of a physical cookbook), Crouton will use AI to grab details from the photo and add in the preparation steps individually. It’s truly impressive.

This may actually be the first recipe and meal planning app my wife sticks with. I’ve shown her a few different apps over the years — mainly Paprika and Mela — and she bounced off those instantly. Crouton has worked well over the last few weeks, and I think it’s largely due to these quick input methods baked into the app. (See what I did there?)

A Few Extremely Minor Impressions of a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Our office is right next door to a Telus store, so our next-door neighbour often has cool phones to try out for a short period of time. I rarely take him up on the offer — I’m pretty entrenched in this Apple ecosystem. But this time I accepted. This time, I took a Galaxy S24 Ultra for a short spin.

I mean short. I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to call it a “spin”.

Here are my two or three very short impressions, though.

• The hardware seems great. The screen is bright and crisp, much like the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The soft curved edges feel great in hand. The camera has all the specifications one could ask for (though I haven’t actually tested the camera) and the front-facing camera is minuscule and out of the way. I’d have no shame pulling out this phone — it’s just as much a piece of jewelry as any iPhone (or, well, any iPhone apart from the iPhone Air).
• Software customization is nice, but finicky. I love the ability to more finely adjust the size of widgets, for instance. I also loved when I found the ability to change volume levels right from the clicky buttons and the “…” menu — this was a truly remarkable find. This said, I have installed four different software updates in my first day or two of minor use. This part has been a terrible experience.
• The included pen is very handy. I think pens/styluses and digital devices are a “to each their own” sort of thing. Some people don’t use an Apple Pencil with the iPad, others only use it. Some would use a stylus with their phone, while others will never touch it. I’m one who would use it if I had one. The ability to highlight text with a pen, markup a screenshot, or more finely select text has been pretty darn handy. I wish Apple made some sort of compatible stylus for the iPhone.

Other than blue bubbles, I believe I could make an Android phone work. Most of my favourite software is web-based these days, ensuring I could keep 99% of my habits if I switched. I’m not sure if I want to make an Android phone work. But I could plug my nose and make it happen.

“I've also come to believe in the complete and utter insignificance of the self, and I think that helps a lot. For example, if you thought you were the most important thing in the Universe, then you would have to bend the entire Universe to your will. If you're the most important thing in the Universe, then how could it not conform to your desires. If it doesn't conform to your desires, something is wrong. However, if you view yourself as a bacteria or an amoeba—or if you view all of your works as writing on water or building castles in the sand, then you have no expectation for how life should "actually" be. Life is just the way it is. When you accept that, you have no cause to be happy or unhappy. Those things almost don't apply.”

— Eric Jorgenson in The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

The Second Cup

Zoomundblitz on Instagram

This is such a remarkable still-life photograph. Every detail is fit and finish. Zoomundblitz’s profile is packed with amazing compositions like this.

Inside Looks: A Mark III Preview

I have simply never been able to stick with any iPhone camera app besides the stock camera app. I think it’s because of Live Photos — I simply love the ability to have that Harry Potter-like movement in a photo — but I can’t be sure beyond this. Halide has long been the only other app I have tried or will try. Between the app’s flair and actual functionality, Halide is a camera app for photographers actually wanting to get more than a snapshot out of their phone.

(Note, I would try Leica’s LUX app if it wasn’t so unbearably expensive. And I have a Leica, for Pete’s sake.)

Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why

Ideally, I’d have something to say that’s insightful after this great piece from Om Malik. But all I can think is, “Even if we come to grips with the reality that velocity is more important than truth in modern journalism, it’s not going to bridge the divide between two polar-opposite viewpoints on reality. One side thinks the other’s velocity is more important than the truth, and the other thinks the other side’s velocity is more important than the truth.”

Our Keyboard Design Reveal

This appears to the offspring of an ergonomic split keyboard, like the Moonlander from ZSA and the Magic Keyboard from Apple.

I Built a Studio That Feels Like An Apple Store

Talk about being dedicated to a long-term project. It would have taken some seriously long-term vision to build this studio, especially in the midst of design changes from Cupertino.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

I began The Almanack of Naval Ravikant this week. I’ve never read a book so slowly — it feels like every line could be highlighted. Here are a few highlights I’ve had from the book so far:

If you get into a relative mindset, you’re always going to hate people who do better than you, you’re always going to be jealous or envious of them. They’ll sense those feelings when you try and do business with them.

And:

Specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned. When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn’t even consider a skill, but people around you noticed.

And:

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

I could go on. So far, this book is an absolute goldmine.

I’m reading this book on the reMarkable Paper Pro Move once again. After discovering snap highlights and notes weren’t actually annotations in an ePub or a PDF but rather just coloured-ink, I put the reMarkable away for reading — I want to send these highlights to Readwise for later, and Readwise requires actual annotations to save highlights. But this week, I discovered reMarkable Web, which appears to be able to extract snap highlights from your ePubs and PDFs and enables you to send these items to Readwise or other apps. The reMarkable is such a wonderful size for reading on the couch in the evening, so I’m ecstatic to have a potential option for extracting actual annotations from ePubs and PDFs on the device. I’ll report back on the experience when I finish the first book.

Three Weeks with Akiflow

I began writing a segment for this Sunday Edition about Akiflow, but it became a bit long. I’ve thrown it up on the blog as its own post as a result. If you want to get my initial thoughts on Akiflow, go check out the link here.

In short:

• I love the design.
• I adore time slots.
• I continually run into integration issues.
• I am surprised the iPad app exists. It’s terrible.

Akiflow is an interesting app for time blockers and I highly recommend you check it out.

Notion 3.2 Brings AI to Mobile

It’s pretty rare when I include strictly news in this section. For that, apologize. This one feels like a big deal though, at least for me.

I record a ton of meetings each day. Notion AI Meeting Notes is some of my most-used software right now. With the big iPhone 17 Pro Max battery, it’s super easy to simply place the iPhone on a coaster in front of me in a meeting and have it record the meeting. That gigantic battery can record meetings all day before needing a charge. Before the client can walk out the front door, I can send meeting minutes and action items out the door with them and have everything logged for the actual work to be done.

But this all has to be done with some planning — as of right now, you can’t add an AI Meeting Notes block to a page right on your iPhone. I thought I was crazy the first time I ran into the limitation.

Notion 3.2 brings AI Meeting Notes to the iPhone, ensuring you can record meetings in a moment’s notice. I’m going to be genuinely grateful to not have to set up the AI block on my Mac only to hit the record button on the iPhone.

As of right now, the last major feature I’m looking for is the ability to record a phone call directly into Notion. Perhaps Notion 3.2 is the key to this. My sense would be, though, that “call” likely means a Zoom/Teams/Meet call and not a phone call itself. I suppose we’ll see.

The Second Cup

Clawdbot

I’d be crazy not to include this as a major link in the Sunday Edition. Clawdbot looks like one of those “3 steps forward moments”, where suddenly you get the “Aha!” after watching the bot work through an Excel sheet instantly. I’m very excited to see where this goes. (If I could figure out how to install it on my computer? I am not good at this stuff admittedly, but if I can’t do it, plenty of people won’t be able to do it.)

The Top 5 Hotels in 2025

As voted by The World’s 50 Best Hotels.

I never really got onboard the Airbnb train like others. I tried it once and we were notified that we shouldn’t admit that we were Airbnbers, as the building had banned Airbnb a year before. I hated the feeling of being an intruder in the building.

Hotels are the way. Perhaps not these hotels. But one can dream.

Iris.Fun

Interesting things are going on here. It looks like the first major app they’ve added to the platform is a calendar app. One to keep an eye on, perhaps.

Quote of the Week

Since I didn’t publish a Fresh Link this week, here’s one of my favourite quotes from the week:

“When you sprint, you sprint hard. When you rest, you rest hard. The most successful people apply this same approach to life. They aren't grazing for hours. They sprint, then rest.”

— Sahil Bloom

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

I’ve been a time-blocker/time-boxer for a long time. “Wake”, “Fitness”, “Prep” and “Admin and Email” have been the first four time blocks each weekday for the last two-plus years, and “Deep Work” usually ensures I can hammer out the most important task of the day before noon. If nothing else, time blocking has provided me peace of mind in knowing I have some time set aside to do a particular thing each day.

The method in which in that time blocking is completed has changed more than a few times, however. I used Sunsama a few years ago, but ultimately found the daily planning and shutdown rituals to be a bit too much each day. I tried using a combination of Reminders and Fantastical for a bit, but found things just didn’t quite jive as well as I liked. I also tried Notion and Notion Calendar for a bit, though this melded work and home life together a little too closely.

Akiflow has long been a time blocking option — it competed directly with Sunsama multiple years ago when I was deep into Sunsama. Akiflow’s biggest hiccup back then for me was its Google-first feature-set — I wasn’t in the Google ecosystem at the time, so Akiflow was a non-starter.

Fast-forward and I’m in the heart of the Google ecosystem, and I’m eager to try another new method for tracking tasks, deadlines, and projects, all inside a time blocking methodology that I feel I can’t live without. Akiflow has lasted longer than I originally expected it would in my personal tool stack, and it may well stick it out through tax season. But it isn’t without its faults.

Here are three quick anecdotes from my first three weeks with Akiflow.

Time Slots

Akiflow introduced a third type of input that makes a lot of sense for time blockers: time slots. When creating a new item, you have three choices: a task, an event, and a time slot:

• Tasks are check-off items added to your calendar, which default to a 30-minute duration. They can be applied to a project (which I treat as “Areas”) and be locked to a particular calendar (say if you have a “Work” or “Personal” calendar).
• Events have whichever duration you choose and act quite like a regular event created in any calendar app. Projects/Areas can be applied to the event as well.
• Time Slots are effectively events inside which you can hold tasks. Time Slots can have a project applied and can be added to a specific calendar of your choosing. You can then drag and drop tasks from your task inbox inside the time slot.

I find myself using time slots all the time. In general, my day revolves through multiple two-hour blocks. Inside the “Admin and Email” time slot at the beginning of my day, for instance, I drag and drop any emails or administrative tasks from Notion that I want to get done before my day really starts. In the first “Deep Work” time slot, I drag and drop the big project work I need to get done — whether that be a Notion link directly to an office project inside Notion — or a task with a link to a Craft document where I can build out more tasks and research.

Time slots are a true epiphany moment for me. Akiflow has taught me I was actually using events as time slots rather than the true concept of an event.

If not for time slots, I’d like have put Akiflow aside at this point.

iOS Apps and Quick Capture

Akiflow’s iPhone app is quite excellent. It looks great, uses screen space quite nicely, and allows for quick daily organization throughout the day. I especially like Akiflow’s widgets on iPhone — they are big, bright, and easy to use.

There are some issues here, though.

First is the iPad app — Akiflow’s iPad app is feeble. The app can’t be used when the iPad is in landscape orientation, and the rest of the interface is quite simply a blown-up copy of the iPhone app. One would hope a proper iPad app would be at or near the top of the priority list.

Second is Akiflow’s capturing methods on iPhone. I found the entire process kind of tedious. Tap on the button in the right corner, and you can throw together a naturally parsed sentence to create your task, event, or time slot. The hiccup is in the final “Add” button — instead of hitting the big checkmark on the keyboard to add the task and get back to the main view, you have to hit “Create” in the top-right corner to actually create the task/event/time slot.

This doesn’t seem so bad in writing, but it’s difficult on iPhone and when on the go. Oftentimes you only have one hand to type in a task or quick thought that hit you, and needing to navigate to the top to hit “Create” or to save an edited item simply gets in the way.

Overall, I quite like the way the Akiflow iPhone apps works and operates. The app is very well-designed and flows pretty smoothly on a small iPhone screen. The iPad would be better if it simply didn’t exist, however, and I hope this is in the cards for the near future.

Integration Hiccups

Lastly, integrations. Akiflow touts its integrations pretty heavily on its website and, when they work, they work pretty nicely. For emails, you can either label or star an email to send it instantly to Akiflow. Notion items can be added to Akiflow through properties. And there are a whole slew of other integrations for developers and designers.

All would be well in this department if the integrations worked. I’ve had to reset and reset my Notion integrations multiple times. When it is working, the integration takes forever to sync. I truly don’t need to wait 15 minutes or more for a Notion item to sync over to Akiflow. By that point, it’s faster to simply copy the item’s link in Notion and paste it into the dedicated field in the task/event/time slot in Akiflow.

Second, emails — I cannot for the life of me get my Gmail account to send emails over to Akiflow. I’ve tried the option to star an email and to label an email, but they simply won’t send over. When I emailed for help, I was provided an email that required me to turn the integrations on and off, to delete and reinstall the app, and to restart the app. Once again, this shouldn’t be too big of a deal. But finding 15 minutes during the week to troubleshoot an app that should work is not in my cards.

Summary

It’s a good thing time slots are such a fantastic option for managing a calendar and a productivity system. If not for time slots, I would have paid Akiflow the cash for the short subscription and called it a day. Instead, time slots are Akiflow’s absolute saving grace at this time.

Presently, my productivity system looks largely as follows:

1. Plan my day and brain dump my tasks in handwritten notes in reMarkable.
2. Create those time blocks and time slots in my actual calendar.
3. Drag and drop tasks into time slots throughout the day.
4. Rely on Akiflow to remind me of all tasks, events, and time slots as each day progresses.

Akiflow is a bit complex and costly (though I recommend traveling the off-boarding path if you are looking to save some money), but I can see it sticking it out thanks to its implementation of time slots. Time slots are one of those retrospectively obvious features that just work for me, and I hope to see more of this type of feature in other apps like Fantastical in the future.

I have this internal goal to read 12 books this year. And though I’m not sure if I can make it, I am certainly seeing the benefits of more daily reading. Meta-wise, my reading workflow is still being built out. So far, it’s pretty simply done inside the Kindle app, with highlights being fed into Readwise for spaced repetition. I started the year reading on the largest iPad Pro, but this has been quickly supplanted by the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It’s a wonderfully sized device for reading.

Another device that looks great for reading: the Viwoods AiPaper Reader (or the Colour model here). I’m probably starting to accumulate too many devices at this point, so the Viwoods is going to stay on my wishlist for now.

Reading has helped with more than just knowledge workflows, though. I’m in the middle of Morgan Housel’s most recent book, The Art of Spending Money. So far, I preferred Housel’s first book, The Psychology of Money, which opens with the following lesson:

Here’s the thing: People from different generations, raised by different parents who earned different incomes and held different values, in different parts of the world, born into different economies, experiencing different job markets with different incentives and different degrees of luck, learn very different lessons.

I despise — yes, despise, hotter-than-a-thousand-suns despise — the attitude of “things being obvious”. There is seldom a situation where “This is the correct way to do things” when it comes to situations people argue over. If people have differing opinions about something, it’s because it’s a complex topic, and it takes walking a few miles in that person’s shoes before you can better understand the reason for the debate.

There’s this little video going around from the latest Landman episode (I’m not a TV-watcher in the slightest, so I haven’t seen the show). The young lady meets with her principal or advisor, and she brings up a heated topic for discussion. The principal — a 60+ year old lady — takes a huge deep breath, pushes her chair back, and looks sternly at the young lady. When asked what she’s doing, the older lady says, “I’m preparing myself to be offended.”

Golly.

“I’m preparing myself to be offended.”

Rather than consider the young lady’s commentary — of which she has no idea what the young lady might say — she just jumps to a half-cocked, ready-to-fight persona. Rather than look for a teaching moment, the old (“wise”?) woman readies herself for verbal warfare. There are remarkable scenes in The Great Gatsby — the one with Leo DiCaprio — where two men verbally berate each other, and the loser of the argument is the one who flinches, loses control of his temper, and raises his eyebrow. The scene is mesmerizing — there is an active verbal assault on each other’s belief systems, and neither party in the debate even becomes flush red in the face.

I’m not wise enough to know where in the world this problem came from. We jump to conclusions faster than a 180-character post or a 10-second video on TikTok. If the first words out of a person’s mouth aren’t reflective of what you believe, it must be because that person is Insert the most vitriol adjective for someone here. “If you don’t believe what I believe, you are, quite simply, a fool.” “The truth is just so obvious to everyone but you.” You know, stuff like that.

Every person has a story or a past. There are reasons — almost always complex reasons — for difficult decisions that were made and which resulted in a poor outcome. Never is someone “crazy” or “stupid”. They are a product of their lessons, their upbringings, their circumstances. It is our job — as reasonable human beings who control our emotions — to query those lessons, upbringings, and circumstances and attempt to discern why a person does or believes the things they do, or why a certain situation ended with those particular results.

There’s always, always, always more to the story. Figure out the story and figure out the result. Skip the story and make your assumptive-self fall further down the ladder.

This is about as blunt and harsh as I can get. I’m tired of presumptions. I’m tired of irrational polarity. I’m tired of 10-second decisions. These actions push people away, when the only chance to build a bridge is to bring people in.

One other thing I read this week:

Easy decisions, hard life. Hard decisions, easy life.

The hard thing to do is give the benefit of the doubt to someone you vehemently disagree with. What’s easy in life when giving someone the benefit of the doubt? You assume a lot less about the world around you and focus on the things in your life you are grateful for.

Easy decision: Choose the hard thing to do.

A Quick Thought on AI-Written Material

I worked with a client recently who made an interesting remark about artificial intelligence. He’s older, successful, and wise — you get the drift. He said he prefers finding written material with spelling mistakes in it because then he knows it’s not written by AI, and he knows the writer knows everything in the material. The opposite being: If you’re using AI to write something, it’s easy to not know what’s inside your writing, and you may be writing something you didn’t intend to say or didn’t intend to include.

I’m neither positive nor negative on AI — like I described above, it’s complex. AI is a fascinating tool for certain parts of my work, but I’ve immediately noticed brain rot creep in around topics easily handed off to an AI bot. Long-term, I imagine I have to come up with a workflow to combat the brain rot.

In summary, though, I appreciate the gentleman’s insight regarding AI. Every so often, the spelling mistake is the key to landing the deal.

Marshmallows and the Best Life

Kevin Wild, a long-time reader of this site and writer of one of my longer-read sites as well, posted this thought-provoking piece recently. It’s short and sweet and is sure to make you wonder which path is the right path. Head over there to read his post before reading my commentary below.

Read it? Good.

I appreciate Kevin’s perspective. Like all things in life, I imagine “Screw it, I’m eating the marshmallow now” is best done in moderation, with a healthy balance of leaving marshmallows for the future in other areas of life. You can’t YOLO your way in every decision or situation. Kevin will surely know this, and I will never imply he doesn’t.

But.

I fear “YOLO”-style thinking chains human beings — that they become slaves to experiences, to pursuing a “best life” defined by gratification. That if you don’t get to experience something, you’re falling short of your potential in some way. If you miss the experience, you aren’t living your “best life”.

I believe there is a great deal of freedom in letting go of this pursuit of gratification. Instead of chasing gratification and satisfaction, I believe most human beings would find more meaning in serving others. Human beings exist to serve, not to be served. And so there is freedom in letting go of an endless pursuit of gratification and adopting a pursuit of service to others.

Perhaps, to bring it back, the best life is one where you don’t eat the marshmallow at all, but build a factory so everyone else can eat marshmallows instead.

The Second Cup

I went to Tokyo with just a 35mm prime

First off, Adrien’s voice is just so soothing. This is almost an ASMR video. Second, I had a giggle when Adrien said something like “Don’t worry about disrupting someone in a big city; if you come back, you are never going to see them again next time.” My wife and I honeymooned in NYC in 2013, and we went to a baseball game. There was a gentleman selling beverages at the game who had a strong New Yorker accent. We then travelled back to NYC one year later and went to another baseball game, but with an entirely different team. There he was!, the same gentleman selling beverages in a different stadium for a different team. Now, the likelihood of seeing him again increases because it was baseball, it was summer, and so on. But I found it insanely unrealistic to have run into the same gentleman two years in a row in a foreign city.

A Visualization of the History of Paris

I’ve always loved Paris. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because it’s such a photogenic city.

Interior Browns and Greens on Instagram

I wondered where my wife was getting her interior design inspiration these days. Our bedroom is now entirely brown and green.

Fresh Links From the Week

Here were a few things I shared from the past week. If you want to stay on top of the list throughout the week, don’t be afraid to subscribe via RSS.

• Bowlus Rivet: An Ultralight Luxury Travel Trailer
• Akiflow: A Time-Blocking Digital Planner and Calendar

I really need to start posting more of these during the week.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

Also, it means I can share about my 2025 here today. So here goes.

I’ve written already about my favourite app of 2025, but I had more than a few things that brought great value and utility to my life from 2025. Here are a few of my favourite things from the year:

• reMarkable Paper Pro Move — This came late in 2025, but it counts! I suspect this will be one of my more-used devices in 2026.
• Titanium Milanese Loop for Apple Watch Ultra — I think this is the GOAT Watch band of all-time. You can effortlessly wear this with a sport jacket, in the hot tub, on the bike, and while cutting the grass.
• Linen, wool, silk sport jacket — I’ve been a sport jacket guy for a while now, but this is my first summer jacket. I think this combination of materials should be available for year-round use; it’s easily the most comfortable fabric combination I’ve experienced. (I'll put a close second shout-out to any of Patrick Assaraff's polo shirts and light sweaters. "Luxury", but without the true luxury price tag.)
• GMK MTNU Modern Dulch Keycaps — This is my second set of MTNU keycaps, but I love the colour, the feel, and most importantly, the sound they make. I’m unsure if I’ll ever buy additional keycaps after experiencing these.
• Crossway x ESV Bible Heirloom Thinline — This Bible, in a high-character green calfskin, is the most beautiful Bible I own. What a joy to read this everyday.

That’s materialistic Josh for you. It was a good year with a few great toys.

But 2025 was more than toys. 2025, for me, was all about networking and connections. There were a few independence themes along the way, for sure. But if I can look back and pick one thing about my 2025 year to share with people, it would be the power of reaching out to others, hosting someone for supper, and building new friendships by taking a risk.

I’ve also written about this here on The Newsprint in the recent past. My wife and I made a conscious decision to be the people who took the risk and made the invite in 2025. If we met someone at church we wanted to get to know better, we sent the email or the text message to line up a dinner. If we wanted to meet more people, we were going to make the effort to meet more people. It worked wonders in 2025, and we’re so excited to see where it goes in 2026.

We’ve made new friends, new connections, and new acquaintances, all of which have provided new points of view, new perspectives, and new conversations to ponder each week. We discovered new friends just down the road. We discovered new friends in other cities. The list of connections has been lengthy, as has the list of blessings that have flowed from those connections.

We’ll forever remember 2025 for being the year when we made the conscious decision to be the people who took the risk to meet others. And it is risky, let’s not kid ourselves — if meeting new people wasn’t stressful, you’d be invited to something new every single day. But hosting new people in your home is risky — you need to clean and tidy, you need to cook something appropriate, you have to be gracious and spend your money on people you hardly know. Forever, though, it’s such a great risk to take.

Thank you to all those folks who said “Yes!” to our invitations, who stomached a meal they maybe didn’t truly like, and who enjoyed some laughs over a glass of wine or iced tea. 2025 was such a wonderful year for making new friends.

My Favourite Photos from 2025

Here’s another quick roundup from 2025. I had a poor photography year overall — I only shot about 950 photos in total with the Leica Q2 in 2025. I have several keepers from that 950, but that’s about 1/3rd of the amount from past years.

Here are a few favourites from 2025:

Buh bye, iPhone Air

After singing the iPhone Air’s praises into a sea of doubters, I gave in: I traded away the iPhone Air for the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Shame on me for not seeing it through. But I couldn’t do it.

The iPhone Air — and the Apple Vision Pro before it — have taught me a few very valuable lessons about technology. After 10 or 15 years of reviewing products in some shape or form, I’ve learned that I can’t garner actual impressions of something until I’ve used the product for at least a few months.

The iPhone Air is probably the most beautifully designed iPhone in Apple’s entire iPhone history. The iPhone 5 or 5s were especially wonderful. As was the first titanium generation iPhone Pro. I feel the iPhone Air topped them all — it had an awe-providing feeling every time I picked it up, even after three months of use. Typing on the phone was perfect in terms of software-keyboard experiences. The Air just fit so wonderfully in your hand.

And it didn’t chintz on truly meaningful specifications, either. It has the best iPhone chip ever. It has the best iPhone screen. Not only that, but it may well have the best iPhone cellular modem ever. This isn’t a “compromising iPhone” in my opinion.

Save for one thing I could not get over: the singular camera.

I have used prime lenses with my mirrorless cameras for a long time. I swear by the Leica Q2 — a one lens, one camera, video-less tool I adore with every part of my materialistic being. I thought — and for a while, happily lived with — I could be a single camera iPhone user and be perfectly content with the tool I’d chosen.

But when Christmas morning hit, and I couldn’t capture photos and videos of my kids opening presents from where I was sitting, I had had enough. The ultra-wide camera is the king of “taking photos of your kids while they sit next to you on the floor” photography. Which is, by and large, what Christmas morning is for many people — handing over gifts to open and watching their face light up with excitement when they tear off the first piece of wrapping paper. Each time I went to shoot a photo, the iPhone Air’s single camera composition was too tight, and I’d have to shift backwards or up and away from the kids. By the time I’d shifted, that present was long since opened, and I’d missed the magic moment I was hoping to capture.

That did it for me. We’re heading on a family vacation in a month’s time, and I decided I wasn’t putting up with missing more memories I didn’t have to miss with my cameras.

I handed off the iPhone Air this week to my mom — who is upgrading from an iPhone 15 Pro and immediately noticed how much better the battery life in the Air was — and received a silver iPhone 17 Pro Max.

What a shocking contrast from the iPhone Air. Where the Air is elegantly svelte and classy, the Pro Max is boldly expansive. It’s just so darn chonky in your hand. Area-wise, it’s less of a jolt going from the Air to the Max than I expected, but weight-wise, it’s like jumping from a row boat to the Titanic.

Of course, the Titanic houses three fully featured cameras, which I’ll put to the test in the coming month or two and report back. But battery life — oh battery life! I was able to get the phone up to 85% before I left the office at the end of the day and set up the Pro Max throughout the evening. Then, overnight, I learned my old-school charger doesn’t work with this latest iPhone, so the phone didn’t charge. I still had 60% charge to get through the entire day.

What a beast.

For now, those are my impressions. I’m excited to travel with this bigger device in the coming month and to truly put the camera to the test. Until then, I’ll lick my wounds knowing I gave in and traded off the iPhone Air.

“The past wasn’t as good as you remember. The present isn’t as bad as you think. The future will be better than you anticipate.”

— Morgan Housel

The Second Cup

A brief history of Times New Roman

I am looking around at new fonts for the site right now. Trust me, Times New Roman isn’t on the list. But it sure is a wonder that this font has stood the test of time since kingdom come.

How to be exceptional at anything

Hassan’s remark regarding paying extreme attention to small details reminds me a lot of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. The idea of properly painting the inside of the first Mac, even though nobody sees it, is something that can resonate for everyone.

Sam Altman’s Method for Clear Thinking

Here I am, attempting to try Akiflow to better manage my day, while some of the greatest thinkers in the world rely on a simple spiral-bound notebook. To each their own, I suppose.

The Great Mental Models

I’m pretty sure I’ve alluded to Shane Parrish’s writing in the past. The above-linked item is a straight point to Parrish’s work. It seems like a sound way to hone your thinking as we head into a new year.

Fresh Links From the Week

Here were a few things I shared from the past week. If you want to stay on top of the list throughout the week, don’t be afraid to subscribe via RSS.

• What’s on Mark Jardine’s Desk?
• A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure About
• Pathfounder Template for reMarkable Paper Pro Move

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!

News breaking on a Saturday is rarely a good thing for the Sunday Edition. News anchors predictably cut to the most polarizing and demeaning questions in an attempt to push one side of a story. Social media floods with expert takes from non-expert positions. One person celebrates and the other shouts in agony.

My comment:

When I do a tax return, I probably weigh between 50 and 100 variables. “What if?” questions, “How much?” scenarios. You get the idea. How many questions does your physician ask you about a particular malady before they attempt a diagnosis? You’ll note that every single professional in the world leads every professional answer with “Well, you see, it depends.” Depends on what? Variables.

So, if your body or your tax return require numerous questions and answers before diagnosis or filing, is it reasonable to assess a geopolitical event on one reason only?

When someone says, “This is because of XYZ and XYZ only”, it’s far more likely that person doesn’t know the right questions to ask, the appropriate variables to weigh, or the correct consequences to ponder.

Nothing, absolutely nothing in life, is as easily answered as it seems. Nothing is ever obvious. If someone says something is obvious, it’s more likely they want to use this to hold over you and gain power over you.

Watch, wait, and listen. Then watch, wait, and listen some more. Maybe you’ll have an 1/8th of the story after you’ve repeated this cycle 10 times.

On a Popular American Parable

I read this parable in Morgan Housel’s The Art of Spending this week. It’s likely a popular parable, as I’ve heard it before.

One of the most powerful money tales is the parable of the Mexican fisherman. An American businessman visits Mexico and meets a local fisherman. The American is shocked to learn the fisherman only works a few hours a day. “What do you do with the rest of your time?” the American asks. “I sleep late, hang out with my family, read, take naps, and play guitar with my friends,” the fisherman says. “You’re doing this all wrong. I have an idea,” says the American. “You should work all day. Borrow money and buy another boat. Hire more fishermen to work for you. You could make so much money you’ll be retired in ten years.” “What would I do in retirement?” the fisherman asks. “You could sleep late, hang out with your family, read, take naps, and play guitar with your friends,” says the American.

Oh, good one!

There is one core difference between the American’s version of retirement and the Mexican fishermen’s version of life:

In the Mexican fishermen’s version, only one person gets to experience sleeping late, hanging out with friends, reading, and more: the fisherman. In the American’s version of retirement, (and under altruistic assumptions because the other side gets the altruistic benefit of the doubt), the Mexican fisherman and his colleagues and employees also get to sleep late, hanging out with family, read, take naps, and more.

The parable is designed to poke fun at the extra work, investment, and delayed gratification the American is presenting. But in the American picture, the extra work, investment, and delayed gratification ensures there is a far larger community to experience the benefits of retirement.

Human beings have presumably been around a long time. We’ve successfully weeded out many terrible actions; actions that limited human advancement for millennia. If investment, delayed gratification, and hard work produced terrible things for humanity, those traits would have been weeded out long ago.

Don’t underestimate the American’s dream in the parable. It’s more than worth delaying reading, taking naps, and hanging out with friends in the short term if it changes numerous lives in the long run.

Clinical Productivity

My friend Aly has started up a blog to satisfy a long-held dream of his. I imagine it’s going to be largely focused on physicians and managing a practice in the long run, but I’m sure there will be nuggets for everyone to digest. Aly is a super smart guy, so it’s best to glean what you can when he writes.

Meeting Aly has been a fun little story (to me, at least). Aly found my writing on The Sweet Setup years ago, and I may (or may not) have influenced a few of his technology purchases over the years (and certainly most recently). Fast-forward and we end up living pretty close to each other, operating in our careers and lives along the way. Meeting each other was coincidental, like so many friendships developed through the web. But it’s the discovery of another tech geek that has me giggling. We can speak in tech geek language — “You can write in Markdown” made perfect sense to the two of us but had our wives confused — and we’ve both tested various tech workflows over the years.

This has been one of the most rewarding parts about writing online. Writing keeps your mind sharp, yes. It gives you a platform to explore and discuss ideas, yes. But more than anything, writing here on The Newsprint has led me to meet so many remarkable people.

If you’ve been a long-time reader, reach out! I’d love to start up a conversation. Who knows — maybe you live just down the road.

My 2025 App of the Year: MyMind

Here’s a quick plug for my blog post this week. Here is a little blurb of my glowing review of MyMind:

Midway through 2025, after four or five months of using MyMind, I found a somewhat-competing app I thought might be able to replace MyMind for a fraction of the cost. I used that app for a month or so. Throughout that month, I would add something to the competing app, and I would add it to MyMind. I couldn’t let go of MyMind. I was unable to overcome MyMind’s design and ease of use. MyMind is so good, I left and came back.

It’s expensive, but MyMind is a phenomenal app worthy of your download.

“Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new.”

— Matthew Dicks

The Second Cup

Clicks Communicator

You’ve surely seen a bunch on the pre-announcement of this interesting device. For now, I’ll wait until actual reviews hit the web. But count me intrigued — I have never once uttered the words “software keyboards are better than hardware keyboards” since I retired my BlackBerry Tour in 2011. I’m excited to read what people think of this device in the coming months.

Viwoods AiPaper Reader Colour

In the spirit of discovering devices that are dedicated to one particular thing and one particular thing only, this e-reader device from Viwoods looks like a great RSS, Readwise/read-later, and e-reading device for your bag.

By the time we’re done, we’re going to be carrying messenger bags filled to the brim with task-specific devices like a reMarkable, a Viwoods, and a Clicks, when an iPhone can replace them all.

Fresh Links From the Week

Here were a few things I shared from the past week. If you want to stay on top of the list throughout the week, don’t be afraid to subscribe via RSS.

• "Saut Hermès" MagSafe Card Holder
• Robert McCombe’s 2026 Calendar Wallpaper Pack
• Space: Life Planner
• Rimowa’s Case for the iPhone 17 Pro Max

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

P.S. — If you’d like to see this in your email inbox, please subscribe below. If you have trouble subscribing, shoot me an email, and I’ll get you on the list. Thanks for the consideration!